Date of Birth
by Jo0natan
Summary: There was one day that Jim Kirk despised. His birthday. January 4th, 2233. Stardate 2233.04. The reason for his intense hatred of the day he was born, was that it was also the day his father had died and his life had turned to shit.


**Hello! **

**I know I should be updating Only the Good Die Young, but I couldn't get Jim out of my head. He's been hanging around for a couple of weeks now and so I finally decided to do something about it. I've only seen the new movies and maybe two episodes of the Original Series so don't judge me too harshly, please, thank you.  
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**There is a** **lot of swearing in this story and mentions of child abuse so if that bothers you, don't read. **

**Please review!**

**Oh, and if it wasn't obvious, this isn't mine.**

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><p>The earliest birthday Jim remembers is his 5th. Her mother had come home a few days earlier and they had travelled to San Francisco. Just him and his mommy. He remembered being excited about getting to spend time alone with his mom, except she hadn't wanted to spend time with him. She had made him wear clothes that were uncomfortable and hot and itchy and when he complained to his mom she told him to be a big boy and stop whining and so Jim did.<p>

The whole day Winona had barely spared a glance to her son, only occasionally making sure that he was still with her as she dragged him along the corridors of Starfleet Headquarters, at times stopping to chat with someone she knew. And the people would look at him and ask his name and tell Winona how he looked so much like George and every time her mother's face would go blank and then she'd smile and never once did she actually look at Jim.

And then they'd gone outside and there had been lots of people and they had stood side by side for _hours_ in the sunshine and Jim was thirsty and every once in a while he'd try to get her mother's attention but she'd just shush him and keep looking forward as the people they'd met earlier in the day kept talking and talking and talking. And the man on the other side of him told him that they were talking about his daddy and he should be proud because his daddy was a _hero_ and he had saved hundreds of people and to be grateful because he wouldn't be alive if his daddy hadn't given his life to save him. And Jim had nodded and been proud of his daddy and thought, _I want to be like daddy one day and help people too_.

They had spent the night in San Francisco and in the morning mommy had put him in the shuttle that was headed for Iowa, kissed his forehead and whispered into his ear, _Happy Birthday, baby._ And then she had left, she said she had to go back to space, that Starfleet needed her and she'd visit them as soon as she could. And then Jim had been alone in the shuttle and when they got to Riverside he got off and waited for Frank to come pick him up except he didn't and so Jim waited some more and then, when the sun was setting, Frank had finally shown up and taken him home where Sammy had been waiting with a lonely cupcake in his hand and told him _Happy Birthday little brother_, and that had been it.

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><p>The next few birthdays had been uneventful. They hadn't gone to San Francisco, but Jim's mother always came home anyway. She came for that one day, kissed him on the forehead and said, <em>Happy Birthday, baby<em>, and then she was gone again, never actually looking him in the eye. She always brought him a present, books mostly, from the different planets she had visited. Actual books, made of paper. And Jim treasured them and he read them, and if he didn't understand the language, he learned it so he could read them. Some of the books were fiction, some were school textbooks, some were books about space, about astrophysics, or xenolinguistics, and Jim read them, over and over again, because his mother had bought them and they were much more interesting than the books they read at school. And if she came home for two weeks on Sam's birthday and two minutes on Jim's it didn't matter, because mommy was just busy and it was okay.

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><p>Before Jim's 10th birthday his mother sent him a message, telling him that they had been asked to go to the 10th anniversary memorial for the Kelvin survivors and if he wanted to go with her. It would be similar to the one they had been on his 5th birthday. And Jim said yes, because it would be nice to get out of Riverside and out of Frank's reach. There was bruise on his cheek where Frank had slapped him but it would be healed by the time of his birthday.<p>

And on his 10th birthday he was back in San Francisco, walking the same corridors with his mother, except this time they also visited the academy, and people asked him if he remembered seeing them the last time he had been there and he smiled and said yes to some and no to others and they all told him and his mother how much he looked like his father and Winona's smiles looked a little bit tighter than the last time and she still wouldn't look at Jim. Except occasionally Jim would catch her staring at him, with a strange look in her eyes, and she wouldn't stop staring until someone said her name at least twice and she flinched and refused to look at him again. And Jim realized that these stares made him more nervous than when she hadn't looked at him at all.

And when they were standing outside and a statue of his father had been unveiled, Jim thought that he didn't even look that much like his father, but then it was a bronze statue so there were no colors and maybe others could see something he could not. After all, people told him that Sammy looked like mom and he had always thought that Sammy just looked like Sammy and Winona looked like Winona. And the man next to him told him to be proud of his father and to be grateful because he wouldn't even be alive without his father's sacrifice, and Jim nodded and was grateful and proud, but at the same time he thought, _but it's my father's fault that my mother can't look at me and that we have to live with Frank and I wish he would be alive and that he had never joined the Starfleet_. But then he told himself to stop being a baby and if his father hadn't joined the Starfleet then all those 800 people would be dead, maybe even more and what were a few bruises from Frank compared to that.

And his mother escorted him to the shuttle station and told him _Happy Birthday_ and then she was gone again. And it was night when got back to Riverside and he walked home and his brother was there with a single cupcake and said _Happy Birthday Jimmy_ and that was it.

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><p>The next couple of birthdays his mother didn't show up though she still sent him gifts. Her visits became rarer and rarer and Frank's fists became harder and harder and then Sammy left. And Jim hated his father for leaving them behind and his mother for not being able to let go of her lost love and seeing that there were two small boys who had needed him and Sammy for going without him and Frank just for being Frank and himself because he couldn't replace the man that had died the day he had been born. And he stopped celebrating his birthdays because there was really nothing to celebrate. A man had died so he could live. There were still the gifts from his mother but who the fuck cares. On his 13th birthday he drove Frank's car off the cliff. On his 14th birthday he got drunk for the first time. A few weeks before his 15th birthday, his mother sent him a message saying that the Starfleet had once again invited them to some stupid ceremony to honor the survivors of U.S.S. Kelvin and Jim's answer consisted of six words: <em>Fuck the Starfleet and fuck you<em>.

The day of his 15th birthday began like any other day. Frank shouted at him from downstairs to make breakfast. He shouted back telling him to make his own fucking breakfast. Frank shouted back, telling him to make the fucking breakfast or he could go without eating for the next week and so Jim sighed and made breakfast. The day continued, he and Frank shouted at each other, Frank left for work, Jim left for school. The first time Jim realized it was his birthday was when he walked into class – late as usual, he had stopped for a smoke before going in – and they were watching the fucking memorial that was being broadcast live from every fucking holoscreen in the building. He stopped at the classroom door, did a one-eighty, and walked straight out. The teacher shouted after him but he didn't care, just kept walking until he was out of the building and kept walking, walking, walking. His chemistry teacher stopped him as he was leaving the premises but let him go when Jim told her to go fuck herself, and leave him the hell alone.

He went home, opened Frank's liquor cabinet, and the next thing he remembered he woke up in the hospital, with a broken collarbone and a wrist, three broken ribs, a concussion and a dislocated shoulder. He didn't even want to think about his face. Good news where, Frank had been arrested so he wouldn't have to go back home anymore and apparently Jim had left him with a broken nose and two black eyes. Not nearly satisfying enough but it'd have to do. High as a kite from the pain medication, Jim sang Happy Birthday to himself until one of the nurses took pity on the fellow patients and sedated him.

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><p>On his 16th birthday Jim became emancipated, Winona was more than happy to be rid of him and his foster family as well. It should have stung probably, that his mother was so willing to let him go, but Jim told himself it didn't and so it didn't. He spent his 17th and 18th birthday drunk, as well as the time between them, and the next one in jail, dodging every mention of the Kelvin and punching the snot out of anyone who was dumb enough to ask him about it.<p>

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><p>On his 20th birthday Jim was once again invited to the memorial, but he chose not to answer the invitation. Instead he travelled to San Francisco on his own, and went to the memorial as a member of the audience. The person next to him asked him if he'd lost someone in the attack and Jim answered <em>everyone. <em>The man turned to look at him but Jim was already gone, unable to listen to people praise his father and look at the statue of the man who should have been there for him but wasn't and now everything was shit. And yes, he knew he was wallowing in self-pity, but who the fuck cares, they don't know him and he didn't have to listen to their bullshit.

Some idiot in a Starfleet uniform saw him and asked if he was James Tiberius Kirk and he was stupid enough to say yes and the idiot said he looked just like his father and that he must've been proud of his father. And then he thanked him, _thanked him_ because apparently he was one of the survivors and Jim wanted to punch him in the face because it's not like he did anything and then there were more of them, all of them thanking him like he was their savior and he couldn't breathe and there were too many of them and so he pushed through the masses trying to escape and not hyperventilate and what the _fuck_ was wrong with these people that they thought they could just come to him like that, like they owned him. Although in a way they did, didn't they? He was the federation's miracle baby, a new life in the middle of death, his father saved his wife and newborn son and 800 other people by dying and his birth was no private event, it belonged to the whole fucking federation. He had seen the interviews Winona had given and had seen the pictures of his baby face plastered in every news article over the world, they had fucking studied the story at school. It was like they all wanted a piece of him and he didn't want that, he didn't belong to anybody, no one owned him, _no one! _Fuck them, he was never coming to one of these things again.

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><p>Except here he was, three years later, once again on his birthday. It <em>was<em> his birthday, not that anyone cared. No one remembered this day because it was his birthday, they remembered it because George Kirk died and blah, blah, blah. It was his first year at the academy and so he had been forced to come. He had sat through two hours of speeches and a dinner and he had shook the hand of every survivor, and answered questions, and yes, he was proud of his father, yes, he knew he owed a lot to the man, yes, he had been told he looked a lot like his dad, yes Winona was doing alright (not that he actually knew how she was), yes, it was an important day, yes, he was still single (wait what?), yes, he liked the Starfleet academy, yes, he hoped to make his father proud, following in his footsteps yes, thank you for remembering and on and on it went. And the thank yous and the questions and the people kept coming. Everybody knew someone who had either died or survived or they had been there themselves and Jim just kept on smiling and nodding and shaking hands.

When he finally got to his dorm room he sat on his bed and buried his head in his hands. He would have to do the same thing next year and the year after that and the year after that. This is what he had signed up for when he had sat in that shuttle and gotten the hell out of Riverside. Thank fuck he didn't have a roommate at the moment as the last one had had enough just a few days ago and they hadn't assigned him a new one yet. Rising from the bed he changed the official uniform into jeans and a t-shirt. Grabbing a half-empty bottle of Scotch he sat back on the bed and took a PADD from the table. After having found what he was looking for, he pressed play and leaned back on the bed closing his eyes. Another swig from the bottle and he could feel the liquid burning in his throat as a voice came from the PADD: _This is a classified recording of the last phone call between the captain of the starship U.S.S Kelvin, George Kirk, and his wife, Winona Kirk, stardate 2233.04._


End file.
